5 Podcasts That Are as Good as They Are Short

A podcast can save a long commute, but an audiobook-length interview can make traffic feel even worse. (Again with an introductory monologue about your cats, Maron?!) These five podcasts reliably clock in at under 45 minutes an episode.

Song Exploder

Almost weekly, Song Exploder lets popular musicians—like Weezer, Björk, Grimes, and the guy who wrote the BoJack Horseman theme—blow up their biggest jams into their component parts.

Reply All

This American Life by way of Wired, Reply All finds human stories in the weirdest corners of the web—everything from Facebook to viral-video fakers, meme makers to murderers. It’s the gold standard for podcasts.

My Dad Wrote a Porno

Why Oh Why

A clever mix of nonfiction and narrative storytelling, Why Oh Why finds the strange intersection of dating and the Internet. It’s a thousand times more interesting than listening to your friends’ drunken OkCupid horror stories.